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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23413120">A Hint of History</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/estelraca/pseuds/estelraca'>estelraca</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Les Misérables - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Gen, Holodecks Never Work Right, Reincarnation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 08:29:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,095</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23413120</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/estelraca/pseuds/estelraca</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The assignment was to create a holodeck simulation script for some great historical moment.  Feuilly wasn't sure the Battle of Hernani actually qualified, but it still seemed like a fun time... until, of course, everything went wrong.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Les Misérables Poisson d'Avril</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Hint of History</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/PilferingApples/gifts">PilferingApples</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the April Fool's challenge, for the prompt "Another Tragic History, Canon Era".  I hope you enjoy this twisted take on the prompt!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>A Hint of History</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I'm not sure this really fits the criteria of the assignment.” Feuilly frowns down at the datapad in his hand.</p>
<p>His rumination is broken by Jehan trying to forcefully remove Feuilly's gold uniform shirt without asking Feuilly to lift his arms first. Jehan's voice is a cheerful alto as he crows, “I'm absolutely certain it does!”</p>
<p>“He's right.” Bahorel grins, already having traded in his red uniform shirt for the familiar—so achingly familiar, even all these centuries later—contours of a red waistcoat.</p>
<p>“He really is right.” Combeferre is staring down at his own datapad, typing in commands in quick staccato bursts.</p>
<p>“Of course he is!” Bahorel doesn't even look over, focused on helping Grantaire into his costume, Grantaire looking as uncertain about this whole mess as Feuilly feels.</p>
<p>“It's just... I mean... does this part really count as <em>tragedy</em>?” Feuilly supposes he can't really argue that 1830 isn't historical. Once a few centuries have gone by it definitely has to count as historical... even if for their little group it is just the <em>start</em> of history, the start of memories that have continued down through the years, with them finding and losing and finding each other again.</p>
<p>“I have been waiting for one hundred and sixty nine years to relive the Battle of Hernani again.” Bahorel steps forward, Grantaire properly if messily attired. He places one hand on each of Feuilly's shoulders.</p>
<p>Feuilly looks into his eyes and decides not to ask about when, exactly, Bahorel last got to relive the battle, because it's been <em>way</em> long than one hundred and sixty-nine years since it actually happened. Instead Feuilly plays along, looking properly inspired as Bahorel continues.</p>
<p>Bahorel's voice wraps around them all. “You can't tell me you're not enjoying getting to bring the best parts of that time forward again. Look at the clothes we're making! And the language we get to speak! This is going to be <em>fun</em>. Right, Enjolras?”</p>
<p>Enjolras raises his head, attention drawn away from his own datapad where he's likely reading something actually important and relevant to their lives now. He's blond again, in this life—stunningly beautiful once more, as he had been when he bound them all together the first time. “What do you want me to say right to?”</p>
<p>Everyone laughs, and Feuilly feels his own lips curl up in a smile. “Bahorel wants you to agree that this is fun.”</p>
<p>Enjolras considers. “It's certainly more fun than a lot of options. Bahorel and Prouvaire and Bossuet seem to be enjoying themselves immensely. So, sure. It's fun.”</p>
<p>Feuilly's smile softens, and he relaxes his shoulders, allowing Bahorel and Jehan to dress him in the history-accurate costumes they have been thoroughly enjoying putting together. Enjolras is right. Their friends are loving this, at least, and that means it's not <em>so</em> bad.</p>
<p>“You know...” Grantaire pulls at one cuff-link. “We don't have to go this far. All we have to do is program the basics of a holodeck simulation, not actually get it up and functional. Command gets to decide which groups' projects will actually go forward. Consider that all this work we're putting into this—all these costumes we're making, all this dialogue we're planning on recording—it could all be for absolutely nothing. Now I know I've made that claim in the past, and I am happy to have been <em>very</em> wrong about the fruits of our labors over time, but—”</p>
<p>Feuilly stops listening, instead accepting his fate and preparing to put his all into portraying... he studies the identity of the poet-warrior that Bahorel and Jehan had selected for him, the man who had fought beside his friends at the original Battle of Hernani while Feuilly was busy doing... something. Sleeping? Working? Helping his neighbors?</p>
<p>Is this man even still in the history books? So much of history—of the history that they <em>remember</em>, even if not all at once, even if not all of them all the time—has been lost to the wars of the past.</p>
<p>And yet here they stand, in their brighter future.</p>
<p>It's not <em>perfect</em>. No time period has ever been perfect. Some have been... more terrible than Feuilly would like to remember. But Starfleet, and the Federation, and the unified world that Earth has become... well. Feuilly has always said, every life, that it's worth it.</p>
<p>Perhaps this is the life where he'll be saying it when he's old.</p>
<p>Jehan has claimed off and on to be the reason their souls are reincarnating together, citing one pact or ritual or prayer or another that he and Bahorel participated in. Perhaps that's true, or perhaps it's something else—some greater power, or perhaps lesser. Some accident of fate.</p>
<p>Folding his uniform, Feuilly touches the Starfleet insignia and thanks whatever powers may or may not have been involved for letting him see this day.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>This isn't what was supposed to happen.</p>
<p>Enjolras surveys the faces around him, and the scene is eerily familiar—familiar, and yet entirely wrong.</p>
<p>There were more people, the last time they stood here.</p>
<p>There was wind-up, and discussion, and preparation, and <em>knowledge</em>.</p>
<p>It was <em>real</em>, last time. He reminds himself of that, though the cobbles feel real beneath his feet now, the malfunctioning holodeck taking them from Bahorel's cheerful little battle of words and fists—a battle that had been about art, and the heart of the populace, and who had a right to be heard; a battle that had been <em>important</em>, but that hadn't been like <em>this</em> one—into a familiar war zone.</p>
<p>The barricade didn't succeed in 1832. Enjolras had known it wouldn't before it actually fell—had saved who he could. He had made sure everyone <em>else</em> knew as much as he did, and he had fought as long as he could.</p>
<p>He doesn't want to do it again.</p>
<p>He's done it over in his memories. He's had nightmares about it. He's fought on <em>other</em> barricades, real and metaphorical. He has not changed who he is through the years—has not changed that <em>fundamentally</em>, at least. He likes to think that he has become more open-minded, perhaps... kinder isn't quite the right word. But he has observed the best in his friends and tried to make it his own, as much as he is able.</p>
<p>And he doesn't want to have them all suffer here, in a nightmare of their own damn making.</p>
<p>“I'm sorry.” Grantaire's voice breaks the silence. “I think... I think this is my fault. I was fiddling with... I didn't mean for this to happen, I just thought I could perhaps recreate some more of the city, some of our old haunts, and—I'm sorry.”</p>
<p>“It's not your fault.” Joly rubs at his nose with his old, familiar cane, limping over to Grantaire to place a hand on his shoulder, and the gestures are all so very familiar even though Enjolras knows he has never seen them with these eyes. “I had added a bit onto the back end, too. Like you said, it was a chance to... saying <em>see home</em> isn't right. France is only home for you these days, Feuilly. But it felt like a chance to reclaim a bit of what nobody else will believe should be ours, and I wanted to take it.”</p>
<p>“Me, too.” Bossuet looks sheepish. “And really, we all should have known better than to get into a holodeck with me. I know they're <em>supposed</em> to be incredibly safe, but the number of my friends who have had issues in one—I really should have known better. You'd think four hundred years would be time enough for whatever luck god I pissed off to get over it, but apparently not.”</p>
<p>“I was just enjoying fiddling with all the options. It's really quite incredible what can be done with holodecks these days.” Combeferre looks down at his hands, just as embarrassed as the rest of them.</p>
<p>Enjolras waits a few seconds, eyes scanning over the remainder of their friends.</p>
<p>Courfeyrac gives him a wide grin. “You know <em>I</em> am far more interested in the present and who I get to hug there than in the past. Except insofar as the two overlap, of course.”</p>
<p>“Of course.” Enjolras exhales a small sigh. “I doubt anyone is to blame. Or perhaps we all are, but only insofar as we're all in the reincarnation cycle together. My main concern is making sure this doesn't turn out like last time. I know we <em>should</em> be safe—that it's just a holodeck—but given everything else going wrong, I don't want someone to be hurt.”</p>
<p>“I'm going to fight beside you this time.” Grantaire blushes furious red as everyone looks at him. “Just as I have since then. I know. I... I think I'll stop talking now.”</p>
<p>“<em>That</em> will be the day.” There's only fondness in Bossuet's voice as he throws an arm around Grantaire's shoulders, holding him tight.</p>
<p>Bahorel hasn't said anything, a fact that Enjolras finds strange. He scans his eyes over the group again, picking out where Bahorel is taking crates away from the barricade and sorting through them.</p>
<p>“Bahorel?” Enjolras asks.</p>
<p>“Just give me... ah. Ah hah! I thought, if the rest of this was here, that you would be too.” Bahorel straightens from where he's kneeling by the crate... cradling a phaser lovingly in his hands. “I do believe these might help keep things a little more like we want them, don't you?”</p>
<p>Enjolras stares at the phaser, his mind trying and failing for a moment to superimpose the new-familiar look of the weapon with the old-familiar look and scent and feel of a France that is centuries gone.</p>
<p>Combeferre has no such hesitation, leaping forward and pulling a handful of phasers out of the crate at Bahorel's feet. “You crazy, lucky—”</p>
<p>“I know.” Bahorel picks up another phaser and brings it to Enjolras, pressing it into his hands. “What's our course of action, captain?”</p>
<p>“I'm not a captain.” Enjolras sets his phaser to the widest beam, hard stun.</p>
<p>“Not yet.” Bahorel winks. “But we all know you're going to get there. And we're going to be the best damn bridge crew you could ever desire.”</p>
<p>Enjolras <em>could</em> argue about that—given how the world has changed, he suspects they will do more good if they scatter, bringing others to their ways of thinking. On the other hand... it's a nice thought. A comforting, pleasant daydream, all of them together, in this not-quite-perfect but so-much-better world they helped create. So instead he just says, “Phasers on stun, men. Wide beams. Let's finish this fight before it's even started.”</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>“I am flabbergasted.” Their instructor—an older woman with steel-grey hair in a short afro around her head—paces in front of them. “You nine have always been a magnet for trouble—”</p>
<p>Feuilly starts to raise his hand, but a single look from Admiral Keoli makes him think not interrupting will be the better option.</p>
<p>Combeferre apparently doesn't get the memo. “We could not have predicted the atmospheric phenomenon—”</p>
<p>“Lightning, boy. You can call it lightning.”</p>
<p>“While it <em>was</em> electrical in nature, it wasn't <em>really</em> lightning because it didn't—” Combeferre's sense finally catches up to his intelligence. “We had no way of predicting the effects of the lightning on the technology. Or really of predicting it would <em>happen</em>, given it was the result of an unexpected reaction between our atmosphere and artifacts that Starfleet—”</p>
<p>Keoli lifts her hands to massage at her temples. “You know what? You lot were clearly trying hard. The basic code you wrote more than fits the criterion for the assignment. You're all alive, even if a little worse for wear. Just... take your week of medical leave and get out of my hair, all right?”</p>
<p>“But—” Combeferre looks like he's going to argue until Bahorel elbows him in the side.</p>
<p>Keoli turns and walks away, leaving them a slightly bedraggled group half in Starfleet uniform and half in their slightly abused historical costumes.</p>
<p>“Well, then.” Bahorel grins at the group. “Let's see what kind of trouble we can find in a week of leave.”</p>
<p>Feuilly doesn't expect it will be much for <em>himself</em>, but seeing the looks on Bahorel and Jehan's faces, he looks forward to hearing the stories they'll have when they get back.</p>
<p>The future isn't quite what he had imagined—has never been quite what he imagined—but Feuilly is very glad to be seeing it, and even happier to be seeing it with this group of friends at his side.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Bonus points, have a small Romantic playlist that I always associate with Bahorel and Jehan and their antics:</p>
<p>Elan by Nightwish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WsOaSUXRHE<br/>Never Look Away by Vienna Teng: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdFQjoOmujItube.com/watch?v=PIk19LCqiuM<br/>Bigger Than Us by Josh Groban: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a7KlxHp5ic<br/>The River by Garth Brooks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdFQjoOmujI<br/>Jealous Gods by Poets of the Fall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff7QnEuSaok<br/>Quicksilver by Cruxshadows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADYjGhtbpwE<br/>Edema Ruh by Nightwish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95YPVeV2sSM</p></blockquote></div></div>
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